Amazon Kindle Fire vs Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet

The two biggest names in eBooks will begin offering new tablets for reading books, watching movies, listening to music and running apps this month. Both feature 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel displays and run modified versions of Google Android. They’ll also both be dirt cheap by iPad or even Android tablet standards.

But there are a number of things setting the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet apart. The B&N model costs more, but offers more memory and storage and has a faster processor than the Kindle Fire. But Amazon offers a wider selection of content for its devices and a stellar system for keeping your media synchronized across devices.

Amazon Kindle Fire

B&N NOOK Tablet

Screen

7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel IPS display

7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel IPS display

CPU

1 GHz TI OMAP4 dual core

1 GHz TI OMAP4 dual core

Memory

512MB

1GB

Storage

8GB

16GB

SD card?

No

Yes

Microphone?

No

Yes

Claimed battery life

8 hours reading

11.5 hours reading

Weight

14.6 ounces

14.1 ounces

Dimensions

7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″

8.1″ x 5″ x 0.48″

Price

$199

$249

The hardware specs paint a certain picture… but the services bundled with each tablet, along with overall performance may paint another.

There’s probably no right answer to the obvious question “which one should I get?” But let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of each device

Amazon Kindle Fire

Pros

Amazon has its own MP3 store and video store, which makes purchasing or renting media easy.

Books, music, and movies purchased from Amazon are stored in the cloud for free.

For $79 per year Amazon Prime members can watch thousands of videos for free and get free two-day shipping on purchases from Amazon.com.

Amazon’s Whispersync technology allows you to sync bookmarks, annotations, last read page, and other details across multiple devices including tablets, eReaders, mobile and PC apps.

The Amazon Appstore already has over 19,000 Android apps available for download.

Every Amazon Kindle owner gets an email address. You can send eBooks to that address to load them onto a Kindle Fire or other Kindle device.

The tablet is $50 cheaper than Barnes & Noble’s (but the same price as the NOOK Color).

Cons

The Kindle Fire has just 8GB of local storage for apps, media, and other content.

There’s no SD card slot for expansion.

Since there’s no SD card slot, you won’t be able to boot custom ROMs without altering the built-in storage (something that NOOK Color users have been doing for a while).

512MB of RAM could limit multitasking performance or affect performance of some games or other apps.

Amazon’s tablet doesn’t have a microphone.

Amazon’s tablet also uses the Amazon Silk web browser, which offers faster browsing by using remote servers to pre-render some content. I’m not counting this as a pro or con, because you have to weight the performance enhancement against the privacy implications — but it is a special feature.

Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet

Pros

The NOOK Tablet has 16GB of storage and 1GB of RAM — twice as much as the Kindle Fire.

Barnes & Noble’s tablet includes a microphone. It’s officially for a “read and record” app which lets you record yourself reading a book — but I suspect developers will come up with other apps that use it as well.

You can walk into a bricks and mortar Barnes & Noble store to check out the NOOK Tablet or get support.

Users get free WiFi access at Barnes & Noble location.

Cons

There are fewer third party apps available in the NOOK app store (at least for now).

The NOOK Tablet relies on third party apps such as Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, and Rhapsody for video and music content.

You have to pay $50 more for a NOOK Tablet than a Kindle Fire (but you can get a NOOK Color for $199 if you like… it just won’t have all the features that come with the Tablet).

Barnes & Noble also claims that the NOOK Tablet has better screen viewing angles than the Kindle Fire, but I haven’t put that to the test yet, so I can neither confirm nor deny the truth of that claim.

Verdict

Neither tablet will offer access to the official Google Android Market, but each will have its own app store. Neither has a camera. Neither is really meant to compete with the Apple iPad, Motorola XOOM, or Samsung Galaxy Tab line of products.

Instead, these are media consumption devices that can also run a number of apps. Amazon’s tablet probably won’t be as easy to hack as Barnes & Noble’s, but Amazon officials have suggested that they don’t really have a problem with users rooting their tablet.

For those that don’t care about the SD card or memory or storage, Amazon’s tablet has a lot going for it including tight integration with Amazon’s digital book and movie services as well as its Whispersync technology for keeping data synchronized between devices.

Share this:

Liliputing’s primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the “Shop” button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we’ll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you’re using an ad blocker and hate online shopping.

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

It would be a big “Pro” for me if the new Nook color tablet runs Cyanogenmod. I took many months for the first Nook Color to officially run Cyanogenmod, so I guess we will just have to wait and see about this new one.

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

aftermath

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Great point! It is a big “Pro” to me that I can hack the McRib by swapping out the bun for a couple of pieces of lettuce. I just don’t see KFC upgrading that bowl from the Chicken Cheesy Bacon Bowl to something more edible, and the food hacking community isn’t coming together to subsidize support.

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

Mr. T

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Slow night, too much weed?

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

Mr. T

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

…Or afternoon, as the case may be….

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

jb82

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

I would add the Lenovo A1 to this list as it is selling for $199.80 at the moment.

PROS:

16gb

Bluetooth

microphone – so you can skype etc

Front and rear cameras

Full sized SD slot and micro SD
Google market

Android stock – no need to root.

Cons

1ghz single core

512mb ram

A sweet alternative if you ask me. Only missing the dual core power over these too.

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

aftermath

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Great point! I should add to my list Dave’s Hot ‘N Juicy at Wendy’s.

* Pros: Those new “Where’s the beef?” ads sure are nostalgic.
* Cons: A hamburger is still a hamburger and is a fairly traditional menu offering at this point (it’s like the resistive touchscreen of sandwiches)

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

Mike W

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

You don’t have to post this comment on *every* thread, you know. The $199 price is only on one model (the black one) for a limited time. The normal price is $249 for the 16GB model, and the cameras are only 0.3mp/3mp front/back, which is better than nothing, but not by much. Oddly, the $229 model says is only has 2GB of storage?? Finally (and I speak as a big fan of their Thinkpad range), I have to comment on Lenovo’s obnoxious practice of posting “full prices” that are completely fictional. The supposed full price of the 16GB A1, for example, is $399, but it’s obviously a fiction (or a lie, if to be precise) since Lenovo has never had any intention of selling this low end tablet for anything more than $249, which is a full $150 lower than that. The very first officially announced price was $249. Lenovo… Read more »

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

Someone

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

It’s just easier to make the Nook into a full tablet if that’s what you want. The fact that it has EXCELLENT hardware for the money is a huge plus. The screen alone is worth a lot of headache.

If you’re into using the devices as they are supposed to be used… The Nook feels a lot more open to me than the Kindle where they are very much about locking you into their services. Those services are VERY nice, and Amazon is clearly not going anywhere… but still. On the flip side, that also means that BN’s services aren’t all that up to snuff.

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

aftermath

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Great point! The Cheesy Bacon Bowl is more like a complete meal, whereas the McRib really is just a sandwich that calls out for at least an order of French Fries.

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

aftermath

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Thank you for your exhaustive list of the important pros and cons of these very valid computing choices. To reciprocate, I thought that I’d offer a comparable analysis of equivalently valid food choices.

–McDonald’s McRib
* Pros: Available for a limited time only
* Cons: Messy to eat

–Verdict
Who cares!? Just close your eyes, repeat those marketing messages to yourself, and enjoy. One thing is for sure: it’s a great time to be employed at a job that offers lunch breaks.

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

Joe Inglish

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Summarized: STOP LIKING WHAT I DON’T LIKE

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

DougC3

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

If there’d been a “both” choice in the poll, I’d have taken that, because I can’t stop waffling (<–hope this doesn't get "aftermath" interested in waffles :). I was actually trying to decide between the Kindle and Nook e-ink dedicated book readers: Kindle Touch and Nook Simple Touch but, at these prices, the color devices are hard to refuse. Apparently .epub books can't be read by Kindle devices without file conversion, but I wonder if Kindle doesn't more than make up for this with other file compatibility? If I remember correctly Kindle Touch ebooks have links to Wikipedia and dictionary word-lookup and Nook ebooks and the Nook Tablet lack anything like this (correct me if I'm wrong). I presume these features would also work on the Kindle Fire. For me, the fast Kindle browser might at least partially offset the extra RAM and storage of the Nook, and the Kindle's blue tooth, a must… Read more »

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

CyberGusa

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

The Kindle Fire doesn’t have bluetooth either, it’s pretty bare minimum for the Kindle Fire as it’s basically just a good screen with a good processor and nothing much else besides Amazon’s services.

While B&N officially never supported bluetooth for the Nook, but the original Nook Color did have the hardware and that’s how people managed to get it working with rooting and custom ROM.

We just don’t know yet whether this can be done for the new Nook Tablet though.

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

DougC3

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

What about the KOBO VOX? Can anyone shed some light on wether a NOOK can be used from Canada?

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

DougC3

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

(accidental dupe post)

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

Faheydm

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Modest discounts for B&N members. Already have a Wi-Fi i-pad that lives in a desk drawer as I am hard pressed to find a practical use for it.

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

oryoki

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Gizmodo says the Color Tablet shown today felt “sluggish,” while the Kindle Fire felt “fluid” and “fast.” Could it be that Amazon’s dev team did a better job customizing Android? Maybe Fire will be faster in actual use, despite the Color Tablet’s better hardware specs. We’ll have to wait to test a production model of each tablet to know for sure.http://gizmodo.com/5857041/nook-tablet-vs-kindle-fire-the-differences-add-up

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

6 years ago

Guest

JP

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

For me, it’s all about how easy it will be to root. Knowing that Ice Cream Sandwich is going to be open sourced, it’s only a matter of time until the great Nook developer community ports it (most likely via CyanogenMod 9) to the Nook tablet. Real ICS tablet vs. Amazon’s fork = Nook Tablet FTW!